Chapter Nine #2
Are we supposed to…choose? Dante asked, clearly distraught by the idea.
I don’t—I’m not sure.
“Adrian,” another voice spoke, much closer and firmer.
“Dahlia?”
Don’t get distracted, Dante warned but he seemed farther away somehow, duller. As if he were underwater.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Darius?” she asked. My heart jumped into my throat. She was so near, I could reach out and touch her, comfort her the way I should have, apologize the way I’d wanted to. “We could have stopped him. We could have run. You just let him go.”
“I’m sorry,” I choked. I couldn’t breathe. Tears slid down my cheeks. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Don’t move, Adrian. Dante’s tone was a comfort amidst a sea of buzzing. Don’t listen to them. They aren’t real.
I knew that. In my mind, I knew that. And yet…
“Come with me, Adrian,” Dahlia spoke again, and I could have sworn I felt the faint brush of her fingertips against my cheek. “You owe me that much.”
“Where?” I asked, my voice cracking in the dark.
“Come,” she said again.
Adrian!
I sank to my knees, shaking my head. I pressed the flats of my palms against my ears, but it made no difference. They were coming faster now, stronger, closer. And there were so many of them. They spoke all at once, drowning out everything, even Dante.
“He was our son.” Orson and Dionne.
“The Geist will never honor you.” Cyrus.
No, no, no. I muttered incomprehensibly as I pressed my face against the ground. Carpet, maybe. Or dirt? It had a faint, strange aroma. I focused on it, fighting the urge to reach for them, clenching my eyes shut tightly despite the tears that streaked freely down my cheeks.
“You aren’t good enough.” Cosmo.
“You can’t do this.” Myrine.
“I don’t need you.” Dante.
But not the real Dante. He was still sending me those same warnings, but based on the gasping, harried way his voice pushed into my mind, he was suffering the same onslaught. I tried to send him encouragement in return. Tried and failed.
I screamed and rolled onto my side on the floor in agony, pressing my palms harder against my ears.
Until it stopped.
Shaking, I lowered my hands and peered through the darkness as if expecting them to all be standing around me. But the void remained empty.
Dante, did you—
“Adrian.”
The voice was soft this time. So soft, I almost didn’t hear it. I wouldn’t have if there were any other noise in the room than the thumping of my frantic heart.
I slowly turned toward where the voice seemed to come from.
“I’m here, Adrian.” Darius.
I gasped.
“No,” I answered but my own voice cracked with doubt. “No, you aren’t.”
“I am.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Why not? You said yourself we don’t know where the Culled are sent. Isn’t it possible they’ve brought me back? For this?”
“No.” I shook my head, but I didn’t have an argument for that. He was right. I had said that.
“Come with me, Adrian,” Darius said, and a hand—his hand—rested on my shoulder exactly where he’d placed it a thousand times before.
I fought the urge to reach for him, to turn to him.
“It’s not real,” I whispered, tears streaming down my cheeks. “You’re not real.”
My mother was outside. So were Maurice and Warren.
Dahlia and Cyrus were engaged in their own Trial.
Cosmo and Myrine were settled way above us in their cozy, luxurious estate.
I hadn’t seen Orson and Dionne since the day I’d told them of their son’s disappearance, but it seemed just as unlikely that they were here as it was for the others.
But Darius…
“Haven’t you missed me, Adrian?”
His voice lifted the way it always did when he smiled, and my heart ached.
I wanted nothing more than to see him again, to laugh with him and joke with him, to drink the Finnegans’ terrible whiskey and dance with Graham and Sophie, to spend a Sunday afternoon curled up on the couch, talking for hours.
“I’ve missed you.” He spoke so close to me, his breath tickled the tendrils of hair at the nape of my neck. I dragged in a rasping breath. “It could be like it was again, Adrian. We could be like we were.”
Dante, I tried desperately.
No reply.
“Please, Adrian, just come to me and we can walk out of here together.”
Dante.
Why wasn’t he answering? Was he dealing with a ghost of his own?
“Adrian, please—”
Finally, I heard it again. The buzzing whine. Better disguised than the others, smaller somehow, more faint, but still there. Almost mechanical.
Listen for the ringing, I told Dante, though it was also to remind myself as well. They aren’t real, remember? Listen for the whine.
“Adrian.” Dante. He spoke louder, clearer than any of the other voices, pulling me out of my reverie. For a moment, I thought I was hearing him in my mind. Then he called for me again. “Adrian, I’m here. Can you hear me? Can you follow my voice?”
No buzzing. No whine. Just Dante calling out to me.
I turned to face the direction I’d heard him calling me from. His voice was like a tether to reality, pulling me out of my sorrow. The others had all faded away.
“I hear you,” I called back, my voice shaking. “I’m coming. Don’t stop talking.”
“This way. Come this way, Adrian. I’m here. I’m right here.”
I took a step in his direction, but the other voices rose again as a cacophony of misery, and Darius, once the softest, was the loudest of them all.
“Don’t leave us, Adrian.” My mother.
“Don’t abandon me again.” Dahlia.
“You aren’t better than us.” Maurice and Warren.
“It’s a fool’s errand, girl.” Cosmo.
“He was better. He would have done better.” Orson and Dionne.
I moved through the din, cheeks wet but focused on Dante’s voice, soft and soothing, more comforting than I’d ever heard it before.
I clung to it, using him as my anchor, seeking him in the storm while everyone I’d ever loved reached forward in the darkness, gripping pieces of my soul and attempting to shred it apart.
“Here, Adrian,” he cried out, clearly experiencing the same assault. I could hear the strain in his voice, the utter pain, but still he called for me. “I’m just over here.”
“I’m coming.”
“You were supposed to be my partner.” Darius, accusatory. “You were supposed to do this with me.”
A sob escaped me, the pitiful sound echoing throughout the dark chamber. I reached out in desperation—and found Dante. Our hands clamped around one another, grabbing on and holding tight.
And the voices ceased. They simply died away as if they’d never been there from the start.
We both dragged in a few steadying breaths, clinging to each other, terrified that if we let go, it would start again.
“Are we—” I started.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you?”
He nodded. I couldn’t see it, but I felt him moving with the motion.
An electric hum filled the room and an enormous blue light zapped into existence. We cringed away, holding up our arms to shield our eyes. It was only a spotlight, and it was centered on a set of floating rings in the center of the now illuminated chamber.
I blinked at them, lips parted in surprise. Dante did the same.
We’d made it. We’d passed the second Trial.
With one last glance at one another, we scrambled to the rings, desperate to be released. We shoved our arms inside the bands, centering them just below the first brand we’d received, and waited.
But this time, the burning felt less like pain and more like victory.